Category: Stories (Page 3 of 3)

1967 was an eventful year for me. I don’t remember how it started off but it ended with one of the greatest blessings of my life, the birth of my first child, Tom,Jr on Christmas eve. At spring break, I swapped my 1965 Volvo with Mom for her Mercury Meteor and Bill Carr and I took off for Greensboro where we picked up my girlfriend, Janet Tweed, a sophomore at WC, for Womens College,  as UNCG was called at the time, proceeded to Durham to pick up her brother, Doug, a freshman at Duke who I was meeting for the first time, and his buddy, Steve Cornelison, and proceeded to the Tweed home in Virginia Beach for a little R&R. We were graciously hosted by Janet’s mother, Mary, who I was also meeting for the first time. Her father, Mac, was in Viet Nam. Janet and I drove Bill to Newport News where he was going to spend break with a buddy of his from Mars Hill. Driving thru the long tunnel to get to NN, an event, while not as dramatic as the other events described herein, occurred which I feel sure is indelibly etched in the three of our olfactory memories. But, I digress…

                                            DOWN IN THE COUNTRY, WITH A FEW DETOURS

John McCamey Caldwell, my grandfather, was born on July 19, 1861(dates and other historical matters that precede my memory I know only because of the painstaking research by my first cousin, Mary Lynn Caldwell Morrill, the beautiful and brilliant oldest child of our grandfather’s oldest child, my Uncle Frank). I don’t know where his middle name came from but it’s also the middle name of my father, Joe, the fourth of his twelve children (born February 27, 1908, the same month and day of his youngest siblings, twins Dot and Don’s birthday in 1930 and mine in 1946). My brother Bill’s middle name is McKamie, but that’s another story.

                                                                   LITTLE LEAGUE

I told son Tom last Saturday at granddaughter Anna’s volleyball game that, triggered by seeing a rolling cart used for ferrying volleyballs around, I thought that I would write about the bat box we used to tote around our bats the first year I played Little League baseball at age 11 for Amity Presbyterian Church’s inaugural team, coached by its new pastor, Rev. Colon (I kid you not). During this past week, as I tried to reconstruct the timeline, I couldn’t remember whether I was in the 5^th grade at Oakhurst or the 6^th at Idlewild when I began playing, so I called brother Bill (4 years older) for help but he couldn’t even remember where he went to 8^th grade. Some help he was. I called Bill rather than brother Harry (2 years younger) because I figured he was “too little in the britch(es)” (one of my older Kiser cousins’ favorite expressions in explaining why I shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things or receive answers to certain questions, a phrase that still sticks in my craw, but which only stimulated my interest in the subject I was asking about or the activity I was begging to participate in, thus causing me to barrage them with more questions or pester them to let me participate, and which, on reflection, I should probably be grateful for as I’m sure it helped spur my intellectual curiosity, such as it is, and feed my competitiveness, which traits, I suppose, have been more blessings than curses over the many years) in those days to be of much help. All of which reminds me, and I hope you, that time, “like an ever rolling stream, bares all its sons (but first their memories) away” so we should say and write those things we’d like others to know about us and what we think while memory and health still permit.

                                                                              OCTOBER MAGIC

I’ve always loved October. The days are usually crisp and bright. The leaves turn crimson and gold. It’s football weather, but baseball’s fat lady still has to hit her high note before the boys of summer put the bats and balls away. And when I was a kid, the fat lady’s song started, “To look sharp and feel sharp too, choose the razor that is best for you…”, followed by the announcer’s words, “The Gillette Cavalcade of Sports brings you the World Series”. I don’t guess anything could excite me as much as that sound, not Tarzan’s “I—E—I—E—I”, or the Lone Ranger’s “Hi-yo, Silver”, or even Richard Rodger’s Victory at Sea music, my introduction, and what an introduction it was, to classical music (on second thought, my first taste of classical music may have been Peter and the Wolf in 2^nd or 3^rd grade). The World Series meant that I could watch my hero, Duke Snider, center fielder for my beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, Dem Bums from Flatbush, hammer a Whitey Ford fastball over Mickey Mantle’s head and over the fence in center in Ebbet’s Field or Yankee stadium, home of the despised Bronx Bombers.

KISER MEMORIES

These are some of my memories of Aunt Verla Kiser’s family, the accuracy of which are obviously clouded by my almost 72 years:

We moved to the house on Sharon Amity Rd owned by Mr Neal Craig around 1949 when I would have been around 3. BTW, Bill called me within the last year or so to tell me the house had burned to the ground, intentionally, if I remember correctly, by the fire dept as it had become uninhabitable. The Kiser family had been living in the house, for how long, I don’t know. My understanding is that Uncle Wilkes, who I never met, or if I did, was too young to remember, took his life there shortly after the suicide period in a life insurance policy he’d taken out on himself expired, leaving Aunt Verla, Gene, Syd, Mickey, Mary Lou and Frankie. Aunt Verla, with the insurance proceeds, built a house several blocks away on Windermere Ln and when she moved her family into the new house we moved in to the Craig house.

MAC TWEED

                                        As Remembered by His Son-in-Law, Tom Caldwell

Note:  This memoir consists of my memories of Mac’s life, primarily from my observations and recollections of his stories. I have done no research. I did make a few notes about things he told me, mostly dates, people and places. I wish I had made more.

               I have written this mainly for my wife, Janet, who loved her father more than I’ve known any child to love a parent; for our sons and grandchildren and generations to come; for Doug, his children and grandchildren and their progeny as well; for all of Mac’s family and for those who knew him. It truly was a labor of love.

Tom Caldwell

22 August, 2016 

I remember almost nothing about the first time I met Mac. It was in the spring of 1967, shortly after he returned from Vietnam.  I think it was the first time Janet had seen her dad since he had come home. He and Mary came down to Greensboro where Janet was a sophomore at WC to take her and her boyfriend, me, to dinner. I guess I was up for inspection and I’m sure I wasn’t ready.